


something she won't speak of

by thcrivalryendsehere (AzaWhite)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, F/M, Introspection, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:35:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23729911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AzaWhite/pseuds/thcrivalryendsehere
Summary: "She looks at the text again. The prophecy runs through her head, a ghostly phantom of a voice whispering the lines with morbid cheer.It isn’t fair that he is going to die."
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 85





	something she won't speak of

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Darkmagyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmagyk/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Mrs. Jackson](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23175976) by [Darkmagyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkmagyk/pseuds/Darkmagyk). 



> Sometimes, you read a fic and it just gets stuck in your brain. Sometimes you're able to dislodge it with a distraction. This time, it sticks in your brain until you write a response a month later.

Paul texts her one Tuesday afternoon, when he knows she’s home from class and it’s just turning to evening in New York. For all that they barely know each other, she and Paul have a good relationship. They’d traded numbers after his stepson had mentioned how it’d be convenient for both his parents to have her number, just in case. Paul had blushed and stammered, but she’d just rattled off her number.

(There was no point in arguing. ‘Just in case’ ends up happening more often than it should, in their lives.)

She’d made sure to tell Paul it was only for emergencies—and not to mention their names unless he needed to, they have power—and her heart is up in her throat as she checks the notification. Clumsy fingers tap and swipe until she can read the text.

The text reads: **There’s something Sally’s not telling me about him, isn’t there?**

She wants to throw up.

So she runs to the bathroom and locks the door just in case, sprawls across the floor with her arms wrapped around the toilet bowl, and dry heaves until she’s crying.

Because there is. She looks at the text again. The prophecy runs through her head, a ghostly phantom of a voice whispering the lines with morbid cheer.

It isn’t fair that he is going to die.

(When has being a demigod ever been fair, sneers the cynical part of her brain, the part that has never gotten over living on the streets as a mere child, afraid and hunted and—)

Well. She amends her thought. It isn’t fair that he _knows_ he is going to die in a few short months, knows that he is a bomb, fine-tuned for his sixteenth birthday, that he will never vote or legally drive a car or even graduate high school. Most half-bloods can at least aspire to milestones, make plans for a future even if they die before reaching it.

He is going to die and there’s nothing she can do about it.

It isn’t fair that it’s him.

(When have you gotten so attached to that ingrate, scoffs her brain again, the part that sees only failed classes and expulsions and irreverence and—)

It isn’t fair that she _really_ knows him, who sings Disney songs incredibly, intentionally off-key just to make her laugh, who isn’t afraid to tell her to get out of her head when she’s getting lost in her own mind, who knows her better than anyone else. Better even than she knows herself sometimes.

He is going to die and she’s in love with him and there’s nothing she can do about it.

The thought brings her up short. In love? She’s only just on the cusp of sixteen. Her? In love? It should sound wrong—a passionate emotion in the mind of a child of Athena—but somehow, it doesn’t.

Or at least, it doesn’t when she connects his name to the emotion.

She dry heaves again, this time forcing a little stomach acid up. It burns her throat and tongue. It doesn’t burn nearly as much as her revelation. She kind of wishes it burned more, burned away the pain or at least burned enough to make her forget.

She loves him.

He is going to die in just a few short months.

She loves a doomed boy.

The world is good as ending, and she’s in love with a boy who will either finish or stop the job by dying.

She wants to laugh, so a brittle sound claws its way up her throat, past the burn of the stomach acid and into the bathroom, echoing on the tiles. Her father knocks on the door, awkwardly asks if she’s okay. She says she’s fine.

(She isn’t.

Something inside her wonders if she ever will be fine again. She doubts it.)

But there’s no time for self-pity. Not now. Paul needs a response, and her tears have mostly subsided.

She pulls up her phone and types a response to Paul.

Her message says: **You shouldn’t hear it from me.**

And that’s a truth, if not _the_ truth. She drops her phone onto the bathmat, listening listlessly to the soft thud it makes upon contact. Mathew and Bobby run past the door, shouting something about playing cops and robbers or some other mundane child game.

She stays there for hours or days, she’s not sure. But eventually she climbs up using the toilet for support and flushes. The bathroom is almost spotless, but she strips and hops in the shower anyway, cranking the water as hot as she can stand. Water cascades down her back and runs down her legs, turning her skin red as it goes. She grabs a bar of soap and a washcloth and _scrubs_ as if the knowledge is just stubborn dirt on her skin she can get rid of if she just tries hard enough.

And gods, she tries.

Her shower lasts almost half an hour, and she can almost hear her stepmother’s gentle chiding about the waste of hot water, but she can’t bring herself to care. When she steps out, her wet foot nudges the phone on the bathmat.

She dries off a hand and puts the phone on the sink counter. After toweling herself dry, she twists the towel into a knot under her arms and pads to the mirror. Her wet hair is plastered to her scalp, accentuating her cheekbones and making them look sharp. The bright bathroom lights create shadows in the hollow of her throat. Despite being flushed from the hot water, her skin looks washed out. She tilts her head, assessing. Her eyes are almost colorless at this angle.

She thinks she looks gaunt.

(If you let go of him, you wouldn’t look this way, hisses the part of her brain that is trying to prevent her self-destruction.)

She goes to her room and pulls on sweatpants and a t-shirt, slides under her covers even though it’s only five in the evening and gods but those few hours seemed like an eternity. The ceiling over her bed is covered in well-worn photographs, and she seeks out his face like a compass does the north pole. There he is, twelve years old, next to Grover, grinning and flashing a peace sign. Laughing, next to Tyson, one arm slung over a hippocampus—Rainbow, she remembers faintly, an edge of hysteria creeping into her mind. Reluctantly posing next to Thalia right before she left with the Hunters.

In the photos she shares with him, he’s always grinning broadly. The mere image of the two of them together sends pangs to her heart she shouldn’t be feeling. Her vision fuzzes and she realizes, belatedly, that she is crying.

Her dream is to make something permanent, something to stand forever. That’s what she’s told herself. And it is true. She wants to make her mark on the world, a mark that nobody can ever break down or take away.

But something deep inside, something she’s repressed since she was a little girl, pipes up. You just want to love and be loved. She debates telling it to shut up.

Being tough is of paramount importance to a demigod. Physical and mental strength are tested every single day. Love—it’s a weakness, a weakness she cannot afford to have when the world is ending. She should stop this madness.

She doesn’t.

If loving him will kill her, she’ll drown in it.

It’s illogical. She shouldn’t feel this way. And if she did, she should be fighting it, because he is going to die. There’s no point in loving someone who is going to die.

He is going to die. She’s in love with him anyway.

She won’t fight it.

(If I die, I die, Percy says, and suddenly Annabeth knows what it is to have her heart ripped out.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave kudos and/or a comment if you enjoyed!


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